


the long way

by isawet



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 13:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17162750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isawet/pseuds/isawet
Summary: Kara meets Lena on a Tuesday.(No power/alien bookstore AU. Fluffy bit written for dctvsecretsanta)





	the long way

**Author's Note:**

> Written for keepcalmandf-ckoff :) Happy Holidays!

Kara meets Lena on a Tuesday afternoon. It’s a slow hour, just after the lunch rush, and the only reason she knows someone’s in the shop is because of the jingling bell on the back of the door. She pokes her head out of the backroom. “Hey. Looking for anything specific?” She looks the woman up and down: dark hair, perfect makeup, designer bag, four inch heels. “Or for restoration, maybe?”

The woman looks around and Kara does too, trying to see the familiar settings from a stranger’s point of view. Big windows at the front, lined with reading nooks made from plush cushions and fuzzy blankets, lit by brass lamps. The bookshelves made from dark wood, polished with use and age, the hand printed signs of genre and author last name. The clutter on the counter, the outdated cash register, doodles on the chalk wall near the children’s section. “I restore in the back,” she adds, after the silence goes on long enough to become awkward.

The woman walks to the counter and picks up one of the business cards. “Kara Danvers,” she reads, and then frowns. “Kara… Danvers.”

Kara smiles her best customer service smile. “That’s me! Owner _and_ proprietor.” She winks nervously. “Um. So. We have a few third editions, some leather bound oldies--those are in the cases. There’s also a foster section but…” she coughs lightly. “You don’t look the type.”

“Foster section?”

Kara blinks. “You have a nice voice,” she blurts. “It’s… not what I was expecting. Were you educated abroad?.” She winces at herself. “Nevermind, that’s invasive. The foster section,” she continues, trying to barrel her way through the awkwardness. “Books free to a good home.”

The woman frowns. “That’s not how the foster system works.”

Kara is intimately aware. “Well… here--” Kara touches the woman’s arm, careful not to grip, and leads her to the small case in the far corner. “See?” She touches the row of spines fondly. “Extra copies, books people aren’t really looking to buy anymore. But still good.”

“I… see.” The woman clearly doesn’t, but she smiles, very slightly. It doesn’t touch her eyes, but it is an attempt at the niceties. “Lena,” she says.

Kara squints at the books. “Melville or Woodson?”

“No, me. Lena.” The woman extends a hand.

Kara takes it. “Pleasure. No offense, but you don’t seem to need to need to go to adoption to build your library.”

“Restoration,” Lena agrees. “I’m here for a quote.”

“Well step into my office,” Kara says cheerily, and leads the way. Behind the counter, through the curtain into the backroom. The clutter fades into a neat workspace, a brightly lit room with cases on the walls, tools neatly stored on shelves and in boxes. She stops at a high table and pats its sterile top. “Did you bring it with you?”

Lena sets her briefcase on the table and clicks it open. She hesitates before removing a plain manila file. “Just pictures, for an appraisal.”

“Top secret book,” Kara says, trying for a joke. Lena’s reaction is muted--very light tightening around her eyes and a slight clenching of her jaw--but Kara winces all the same. 

“Not a secret. Just important.”

“I get it,” Kara says, her tone apologetic. “For all you knew, I was back here with a hot glue gun and scrapbooking scissors.”

Some of the tension leaves Lena’s shoulders. “I wanted to visit first, to get a feel for your services, but my schedule didn’t allow for it. I’m leaving for Metropolis next week.”

“My cousin lives there!” Kara winces at her own enthusiasm. “I mean, a lot of people do. But my cousin is one of them.”

“Yes,” Lena agrees, and there’s something odd in her voice. She clears her throat and straightens before Kara can put her finger on it. “Anyway.” She spreads out a number of glossy photographs onto the tabletop, neatening the edges until they’re lined up prim and proper. 

Kara peers down at them, lip between her teeth as she concentrates. “Hm.” She turns to retrieve a magnifying glass and bends even closer, her hair brushing the borders of the images. “Hm,” she says again, moving them into a different order, than yet another. “Hm.”

“You’re making me nervous.”

Kara starts. She straightens. “Sorry, sorry. I got distracted.” She touches the edge of one photo.   
“If this is a rare print, I might need some time to gather the appropriate materials so it doesn’t look patchwork.”

“It’s not a rare print.” Lena’s eyes have gone distant. “She got it at a garage sale. Fifty cents.”

“A bargain,” Kara agrees. “From… your mother?”

“Yes.” 

“Obviously I’d need to see it in person to be totally sure, but I think I can definitely work with this.” She pulls a clipboard out from under a counter and clicks a pen. “Missing pages? The covers look intact. I work with a few artists that can restore the illustrations.”

“The binding’s all but disintegrated, but I have all the pages.”

Kara opens a laptop and does a quick search. “Not to harm my own bottom line, but I could facilitate a brand new copy, same year, same edition. Or even acquire a more rare--”

Lena gathers the photos with a hard jerky movement, shuffling the papers back into the folder and shutting it with a snap. “That won’t be necessary. If you’re unwilling or unable, I’ll find someone who isn’t.”

“No,” Kara says quickly, “no, I’m sorry, I just--”

“I’m not offended. I didn’t come here expecting much.”

Kara bristles, but the dig isn’t enough to miss the hurt in Lena’s face, the way the air has gone thick and angry between them. “I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if I didn’t--”

“There is no need for further explanation.” Lena closes her briefcase with a snap. “Thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” Kara protests, but Lena is gone with a swish of her ponytail. Her perfume, something subtle and expensive, lingers. She hears the bell jingle again, and then everything is silent.

//

Lena, Kara thinks, is clearly a rich and important person. Who came into her store expecting… termites, probably. And dust, and gorilla glue and unsharpened exacto knives. Like Kara is the country bumpkin she was in high school, like she isn’t someone who’s put every bit of herself into the concrete foundation, like she didn’t eat white rice and red beans all through college, like she didn’t sleep behind the counter in a sleeping bag and shower at Alex’s gym to pay for the storefront renovation. She probably thinks Kara’s in the back spilling coffee on priceless first editions and brandishing dull box cutters at her clients.

_I sharpen all my knives_ , she texts Alex furiously. _myself!_ She stares unblinking at her phone, waiting for the response, until her eyes burn and she rolls over with a groan, roused only with the buzzing vibration of the phone through the pillow. She squints at it.

_who cares_ the reply says. Then the screen lights up with a picture of Alex with her arm looped around Kara’s neck, half-hug half-headlock, matching grins on their young faces. “Did mom go off on you again?”

“No,” Kara says with a sigh, flopping onto her back. “I think I blew it with a client. A small restoration job, but a potentially big client. I was... unprofessional.”

Alex hums sympathetically. “Just one job, though. How many damaged books can one person have?”

Kara sighs again, more heavily. “It’s not about the one repair job, it’s about the _relationship_. You fix something like that, something precious, bring it back, and you’ve won a customer for life. They’ll network for you, they’ll purchase exclusively from you, rely on you for recommendations and acquisitions.” Her voice takes on a soft, reverent tone. “Books are intimate, personal. They--”

Alex fake snores.

“I hate you.”

“Do you? Or do you love me, because when I get back to National I’ll be carrying two pounds of Hong Kong’s finest frozen shrimp dumplings in my icepack lined carry-on?”

Kara feels a frisson of guilt. “What time is it there?”

“A decent hour,” Alex assures her. “I love you, but not enough for crack-of-dawn knife sharpening texts.”

“I had to text you,” Kara insists indignantly. “You’ve seen me sharpen them! You’re my witness!”

“You have my permission to give Big Client my card the next time you see them. I’ll prepare an affidavit in your defense.”

“Is that what an affidavit is?”

“I don’t know, I’m a doctor. Listen, Kara. I’ll see you in two days, okay? All the dumplings you can eat, you pick the made-for-tv movie, you can vent all you want. But if you want the client back, go get the client back.”

“You’re right,” Kara says, and tugs at a loose thread on her bedspread. “I can do this.”

“I’m always right, man-hands,” Alex says, and hangs up before Kara can respond.

 

Kara spends nine hours crafting an email. She edits and re-edits; changes words and then hits undo; calls Winn in a panic and makes him proofread the message for spelling and grammar. 

Lena responds less than a minute after she presses send with a silent screech. _Tomorrow at 11?_

“Yes!” Kara shouts, pumping a fist into the air. If she does a victory dance around her apartment, it’s not like anyone’s there to mock her. 

//

Kara changes her outfit four times before she realizes she’s about to be late to the most important meeting of her professional career thus far; she sprints down the stairs and applies deodorant on the bus with an apologetic look at the woman seated next to her. 

She unlocks the store, rushing through the motions of opening the register and flipping the sign to _open_.

Lena arrives on the dot, just as Kara has given in to chewing her fingernails off. She yanks her hand away from her mouth and hides her ragged cuticles behind her back. “Lena!”

“Ms. Danvers.”

“Kara,” Kara insists. “Oh--or should I--Ms…” she trails off, realizing she doesn’t know Lena’s last name.”

“Lena is fine,” Lena says, and then smiles. “Kara.”

Kara pinks. “I want to apologize again, I--”

Lena holds up a hand, stopping her short. “I overreacted. You were just trying to help.”

“When you hurt someone, you apologize,” Kara says stubbornly. She sticks out her hand. “Start over?”

Lena hesitates. Her hand is soft but her grip is sure. “I have a book I’d like you to look at.” She sets the same briefcase on the table, but this time instead of a folder there’s a sealed bag, with a book inside. “My mother gave it to me.”

Kara touches the edge of the bag, the plastic crinkling against her finger. “I have something to show you.” She turns, kneeling to move some books around, and finds what she’s looking for. It’s a dictionary, worn but lovingly so. “My parents,” she says slowly, “used to play this game with me. We’d eat dinner on the couch and talk using the hardest words we knew. When someone didn’t know a word and had to look it up, they got a point. At the end of the month the person with the least amount of points got to decide what we got for dinner.”

“Did you win?”

“Every month. I poured over the dictionary before bed, underlining words I thought they wouldn’t know. I didn’t realize until I was older that they were letting me win.” She opens the book, the thin thin pages, touches a few of the words underlined in a child’s shaky hand. “They died when I was ten.”

She waits for Lena’s apology, her awkward stranger’s attempt at comfort. Instead she hears the zipping of the bag, and the rustling of paper. Lena wasn’t kidding when she said the binding was all but gone, leaving little flecks of glue on the tabletop and she opens to the first page. It’s a children’s storybook, the illustrations faded but still vibrant. “She drowned,” Lena says simply. “The social worker gave me a garbage bag for my things. This was the only thing I knew I wanted to take.” She traces the ornate lettering of the first title. “It’s not even well written.”

Kara smiles. “To a child, that means almost nothing.”

“Yes,” Lena agrees, and her smile is more genuine than Kara has ever seen it. “I think I would like to retain your services, Kara Danvers.”

//

“So,” Kara says, very sneakily. “Hypothetically, if--”

“Oh god,” Alex says, her long-suffering evident, “what have you done.”

“No, this is a real hypothetical.”

Alex groans.

“It is,” Kara insists. She pouts, sitting on the sofa; she pokes the hole in one of her fuzzy socks sullenly. “Fine. Nevermind.” 

Alex presses a bowl into her hands. “Eat something.”

Kara stuffs three dumplings into her mouth and talks around them. “Ahdfh ffink fee dffnt--”

Alex holds up a hand to shield the spray of shrimp and scallions. “Jesus Christ.”

Kara chews and swallows with minimal difficulty. “In PFLAG,” she starts, and Alex groans again, flopping backwards.

“Don’t tell me you go to those.” She sits up with sudden horror. “Don’t tell me _you and mom_ go to those _together_.”

“Mom lives two thousand miles away,” Kara reminds her. 

Alex turns her gaze upwards. “God willing.”

“In PFLAG,” Kara starts again, “this woman talked to us about gaydar.”

Alex is still appealing to the universe to save her. Kara does her sisterly duty and kicks Alex in the ribcage until Alex gives her the attention she wants. Alex retaliates by grabbing her ankle and tickling the sole of her foot until Kara screeches and flails off the sofa, her dumplings falling to the hardwood floor with a wet flop. She eats one with her fingers and Alex makes a disgusted noise. 

“Gaydar,” Kara continues, like she’s not lying akimbo with one leg still propped up on the sofa and eating food off the floor. “She said it was like. Half for survival and half for yearning.”

Alex slides down to join her on the floor. “Yearning?”

“She quoted something,” Kara says, brow furrowing as she tries to remember. “Something like… recognizing something in someone that matches the something in yourself. A knowing.”

Alex retrieves her beer from the coffee table and takes a thoughtful swig. “I guess. Never thought about it so poetically, but you are a huge nerd, so it checks out you would. What has you thinking about it?”

“That client,” Kara says, “remember? She came back, brought the book she wants me to work on.”

“Hey, you got the gig?” Alex grins at her, big sibling proud, and grabs Kara’s glass of wine to pass it to her. “Thattagirl.”

Kara clinks their drinks together, smiling. “Yeah. And then she… stayed? Watched me work. We talked.”

“About what? Chanel No. 5? Do rich girls actually wear Chanel No. 5? I kind of assumed Hollywood made it up.”

“We talked about our parents.”

Alex freezes, the bottle against her lips. She sets it down slowly, turning to face Kara fully. “About… Eliza?”

“No.”

Alex breath catches. “Kara,” she says softly, and Kara wiggles to tuck herself into Alex’s side. 

“It was good,” she says softly. “Lena understood. She talked about her mother too.”

Alex kisses her temple. “A knowing?”

“A knowing,” Kara agrees. “And I, uh. I had this thought, right as she was leaving?”

Alex waits her out, fingers carding gently through Kara’s hair.

“Her eyes,” Kara says, after a long long pause. “I just thought her eyes were really pretty.”

Alex tilts her head. “Oh. Oh!”

“But I don’t know,” Kara frets, wringing her hands in her lap and hiding her face in Alex’s armpit. “I don’t know, maybe it was just talking to someone who understands, and it got me all--all feely and confused.” She makes a sad sniffly noise. “You smell.”

“You’re the one who buried your nose in my sweat glands,” Alex replies tartly, but she rubs Kara’s back soothingly. 

“But I would know,” Kara says. “I would know, by now, right? So because I don’t know, that means…”

She feels Alex shrug under her cheek. “Sorry kiddo, but I don’t think life works that simply.”

Kara grumps something unintelligible. Alex pinches her, making her yelp. “I’m overreacting,” Kara decides, sitting up. “It’s--you know I struggle, with friendship. This is just me not knowing how to make friends, that’s all. Just like high school.”

“Hm,” Alex says, and there’s something in her tone that makes Kara frown.

“You disagree?”

“Friendship is good,” Alex reassures her. “I just, uh. Remember thinking the same way about Maggie.” Kara groans, and Alex pinches her again. “Don’t be such a drama queen. Don’t overthink it! Just hang out, be her friend. If… other feelings happen, they happen. Then she’ll either tell you she doesn’t feel the same or she’ll convince you to go vegan until you can’t take it anymore and eat twenty two chicken nuggets soaked in lemon vodka in the closet of your shared one bedroom while she accuses you of being a commitment-phobe because you won’t adopt a one eyed three legged kitten named K.J. Lang and you have to stay in a Motel 6 for three nights while she moves out.”

Kara blinks. “Are… those the only options?”

Alex pats her head. “It’s a rainbow bitch of a lifestyle.”

//

Lena has taken to bringing her lunch. At first it was simple, a sandwich from the shop Kara had mentioned offhand was her favourite. She’d watched, wide-eyed, while Kara wolfed the entire sub down in roughly half a minute, shredded lettuce dropping onto her blouse. “Thanks!” Kara had said, through her last bite of turkey on rye. “I needed a snack.”

“A snack,” Lena repeated weakly. Wordlessly, she handed over her own bag of chips.

 

She adjusts; brings two portions for Kara and one for herself. Brings croissants and pastries and cartons of fried rice; protein shakes that are suspiciously green and healthy tasting, but also Belly Burger fries to chase the taste away.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says, for the fourth time that day, as Lena insists Kara eat the last dumpling. “I know you must have better things to do than hang around my shop all day.” Sometimes there’s even a bit of a rush and she’s too busy to give Lena her full attention.

Lena looks up from the nook where she’s ensconced herself near the foster section, a collection of sonnets in the original Italian in her lap. “I assure you, if I didn’t want to be here, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I was thinking,” Kara says, and her palms are sweaty. “That I could work on your book tonight, after closing. It’s nearly finished, and I, uh. I owe you food, you know, so we could order… something with vegetables?”

“Gifts are not things to be owed returns,” Lena rebukes mildly, but she takes her phone out, tapping away briskly. “I have to go to the office briefly, but I’m free this evening.”

“The art is finished,” Kara says, unable to tamp down her beaming smile. “It’s gorgeous, I can’t wait for you to see it.”

“I’m thinking Thai,” Lena muses. Her eyes really are striking, Kara thinks. “And something bubbly and expensive, to celebrate.”

//

She panic texts Alex until Alex stops responding with encouraging messages and starts sending back increasingly embarrassing anecdotes from Kara’s childhood. 

Lena, as always, is exactly on time. She’s holding three bags of takeout and the smell is enough to thoroughly distract Kara from her nerves. She’s glowering at the plastic knots, ripping at them with her fingertips while Lena sets out plates, holding plastic utensils like they’re alien artifacts she’s never seen before. “Let me,” she huffs angrily, “eat you!”

Lena hands her a pair of scissors. “I… have a confession to make.”

Kara freezes, eyes huge. “Oh?” she squeaks.

“I know your cousin.”

Kara blinks. It’s not anywhere near anything she was expecting. “You know Clark?”

“Not… personally. He knew my brother.”

“Your brother works at the paper?”

“My brother,” Lena says slowly, “is Alexander Luthor.”

 

The Thai food is getting cold. They’ve moved into the window nook, the shade drawn to hide the outside world away. “I didn’t realize,” Lena says carefully, “at first. That you didn’t know who I was. I was very much in the center of the news cycle, once your cousin published the expose on L-Corp’s activities. I thought you were being kind, not mentioning it.”

“I read more than I watch television,” Kara says apologetically. “Clark’s articles mentioned a sister, but not by name.”

“It was kind of him,” Lena says, in a tone that’s not quite thankful. “He focused on my brother and my mother; I was not yet involved with the company.”

“You didn’t have to tell me,” Kara says. “I understand.”

“I find,” Lena says, slowly, like she’s still working it out herself, “that I dislike the idea of secrets between us.”

Kara pinks. She ducks her head to adjust her glasses. “I, um. Let me get you the book, so we can put it away before the drunken noodles come out.” She’d wrapped it, then unwrapped it, then wrapped it again, crumpling the paper and cursing the ribbons. Finally she’d chosen a simple box, no bow. 

Lena’s hands shake when they slip the top off; her breath catches when she touches the cover. “It’s gorgeous. More than I expected.”

“I actually scaled back a little. I thought… you’d rather it looked like you remembered, not like a new copy.”

“Yes,” Lena says. Her voice cracks and she clears her throat, looking away. “There is no compensation that could communicate my gratitude.”

“I don’t have many friends,” Kara offers. She can feel her heart rabbiting in her chest; she thinks she’d like to touch Lena’s hair and feel Lena’s head on her shoulder. “I think the foster section would miss you.”

“Well,” Lena says, “we can’t have that.”

“I’d like to take you to dinner,” Kara blurts.

Lena looks over at the untouched takeout.

“At a restaurant,” Kara stumbles. “I’d let you pick, but I want to pay. Also I can’t pick you up because I don’t have a car.”

She watches Lena’s face and knows she’s bright red and stammering and there’s probably crumbs in her hair and wrinkles in her shirt; Lena is immaculately pristine, her face smooth and undecipherable. Then it cracks; a slow quiet smile, a soft fluttering of her lashes against her cheek. 

//

Kara texts Alex a rainbow emoji. 

_you’re always copying me_ is the lightning fast response. _i’m googling her its big sister duty 101_

_lena LUTHOR??_

_im telling mom_

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @ sunspill


End file.
